“I’m fine,” she said. She had a strangely incomplete smile, one which began but didn’t become whole. “I haven’t had one headache since the divorce.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, dear, now you’re angry.” She turned to the waiter: “Another old-fashioned, please. No sugar.”

He said, “You really are looking more gorgeous than ever.”

Unaccountably, she blanched. “Stop looking at me.” She dropped her eyes and withdrew, with a brooding, inward expression. “You didn’t call this meeting to throw roses at my feet, did you? Will you please stop looking at me?”

“Why?”

“You’re making overtures. Don’t be adventurous-stop acting as though you still want me.”

“I suppose I do, when you come down to it-the way a reformed alcoholic wants whiskey. But don’t read anything into it; the truth is, you’re the one thing above all else I’ve wanted to forget.”

“By inviting me to lunch with you?”

“It’s not a social visit.”

“So you said on the phone. You were damned mysterious.”

“I apologize. I thought it would persuade you to come.”

“All right. It worked, didn’t it?” She had composed herself, putting on her arch face. She took out a compact to inspect her lipstick. Hastings tried to fight off the feeling of intimidation-as if he were a former enlisted man confronted suddenly by a lieutenant general: a subservient reaction ingrained in moments of crisis, but which would disintegrate if given time for logical assessment.

He tried to lighten the tone. “You’re still blushing. I remember how hot your face looked the first time I asked you for a date.”

“Let’s not resurrect our turbulent affairs, Russ. It’s so tiresome. I’ve still got tread marks where you ran over me-I’m in no mood for nostalgia.”

Overcome by an odd sense of defeat, he shifted his chair, feeling dismally that this cold space between them was a place where love once had been; it hardly seemed possible.

When a waiter brought menus, he accepted the interruption gratefully. They made selections, the waiter wrote orders and went, and Diane said, “Do you suppose we could get down to cases, Russ? I’m going to have to make it a quick meal-a thousand things to do this afternoon.”

“All right,” he said. Gladly. “Several things. First, I spent the weekend in Arizona with your father. I mention it only so you won’t later find out and suspect me of doing something behind your back. It was purely business-you know where I work.”

Her thin shoulders stirred; her mouth twisted. “All right. You’ve made it clear you didn’t go to him to ask him to intercede with me.”

“To persuade you to come back to me? You’re flattering one of us.”

“Am I?”

“Clutch it to your breast, if it warms you. I hope this is the last time we’ll have to see each other.”

Her look, not directed at him, was icy with scorn. Hastings looked down and said in a different voice, “Why do we always have to bicker? I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I’d like to keep it civilized. I came to see you because I want you to give me some facts which I think you wouldn’t give out to a stranger.”

“Facts about what?”

“You’ve gone public.”

“That’s hardly a secret.”

“I need to know how deeply Mason Villiers is involved.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You need to know? Whatever for?”

“I work for the government, remember? Villiers is a crook, I’m a cop. It’s as simple as that.”

“I see. Either you’re indignant because he’s a crook, or you think I’ve been seeing him, and that makes you angry.”

“Jealousy? Maybe-it’s possible. But I don’t like seeing you involve yourself with a barracuda like Villiers. Underneath his brainy front, there’s the claim-jumping personality of a mining-camp swindler. All the professionals know enough to give him wide berth.”

Diane began to eat hungrily. “I gather you’ve met him?”

“Villiers? No.”

“You’re a bit green around the edges. Look, Russ, if it gives you comfort, you can assume if I had any dealings with him I’d have him watched by the best battery of attorneys I could hire. I’m no innocent child of the woods.”

“Maybe. But if you go swimming with sharks you need sharp teeth. I’ve got reason to suspect he’s using you as part of a scheme against your father’s corporation.”

She gave that odd half-smile again. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Russ. He may be tough, but he’s hardly as tough as my father. There isn’t a man alive who could whip my father in a corporate fight.”

He was taken aback. He covered his fast rearrangement of thoughts by addressing himself to his meal. Clearly she knew nothing of her father’s illness; equally clearly, Judd had deliberately withheld it from her. It was like him-Judd was curiously sentimental, but he had no patience with sentimentality when it was directed at himself. He would want his daughter’s love, but never her tears.

There was a clear choice; he made the decision painfully. He felt a strong duty to Judd’s implied wishes. He told her nothing of her father’s illness.

He carried on about Villiers, but she was having none of it, she seemed to feel personally assaulted, her judgment questioned. She gathered her sunglasses and handbag and said, “I really must run,” and he let it end lamely, inconclusively.

He sat over the detectives’ preliminary reports in his bathrobe, hearing the night traffic hoot along below his apartment window, staring at the pages without reading them, and feeling as if a plug had been pulled and everything drained out of him. Once he went so far as to dial Carol’s unlisted number-he had taken it down, perversely, that last night alone in her flat. There was no answer to his ring, and when he cradled the phone he laughed harshly at himself.

Around eleven o’clock there was a buzz at the door; he went to answer it and found Cynthia MacNee there, grinning, with one shoulder propped against the jamb and her silly hat askew. “Throw me out if I’m intruding. I was feeling a little lonely and kind of randy, and when I found out you’d had lunch with her ladyship, I kind of thought you might want company tonight.”

“Very astute,” he said. “Come on in.”

He watched her sweep into the room with her imperious lunging stride. She was big and tall, and long-faced with evident depression. She said, “Why don’t we get rip-roaring drunk?”

He closed the door. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything.” She was at the window, holding the drapery back. “You really have a pointillist’s view through the smog from here, don’t you?” She turned back and sank into a chair with elaborate indications of unhappiness. “My latest pastime, duration one week, busted up last night. He gave me a little exercise and a lot of abuse, and I suddenly said to myself, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing with a motherfucking son of a bitch like him?’ So I gave him his walking papers, and now I’ve got the blues real bad. The deep indigos. Do you mind me crashing in on you? I’d love to exchange sympathetic ears with you, dahling.”

“Sounds like a fine idea,” he said. “What are you drinking?”

“Whatever works fastest.”

He made drinks, and when he brought them she got up from the chair. “Sit here and let me sit at your feet. Are you nonplussed by my sudden appearance, dear Russ? Should I have my drink and depart hence?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Then hold my hand, dearest one.” She sat down on the floor with her shoulder against his knee; blindly her hand crept toward his. It felt cool and moist in his palm. She said, “The life of the swinging single can be most trying. I suppose you’ve found that out.”

“I haven’t made much of an effort to swing.”

“You ought to,” she said. “Get the bile out of your system. You’re all uptight, Russ. You’ve still got the look of a one-woman man, and that’s not much good when you haven’t got a woman. Swing a little, try some one-nighters for variety. Loosen up. Hang in there.”